Longitudinal spatial hole burning (LSHB) induces degradation of longitudinal-mode stability in distributed feedback (DPB) lasers. Measurement of frequency modulation characteristics has revealed that, in absorptive-grating gain-coupled DFB lasers, the LSHB diminishes as power increases. This anomalous behavior has been qualitatively explained by a theoretical analysis that took into account the saturable nature of the absorption of the gain-coupled grating. This LSHB suppression effect is advantageous for high-power single longitudinal-mode operation of DFB lasers.